Development and evaluation of a musical training for peoples with a cochlear implant. The Musi-CI project

This adventure has been very dear to me. Not only because Joke Veltman challenged me to do research that was unconventional and completely outside of my comfort zone, but also because of my passion for music. Joke Veltman is a professional musician and music teacher. She gradually became deaf due to a hereditary disease and received a cochlear implant in 2013. This is an internal prosthesis that makes it possible to understand speech in controlled conditions. But listening to music is a challenge. Most people with a CI avoid situations where music can be heard and that leads to social isolation. Joke has developed a method for wearers of a CI to enjoy music again and to participate in social interaction in which music plays a role. She completed a Masters in Music to better understand how the brain interacts with music. It was very special that Joke herself had applied for a subsidy from the ZonMw program Voor Each Other. That grant was for her foundation, not for me. Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge and took Joke into the world of research, for free. Joke has brought together a consortium of professionals in the field of CI rehabilitation and research who share the love for music and the compassion for the loss of music enjoyment that CI-users experience. We have collaborated with professionals of the Radboudumc Cilia Beijk MSc and Wendy Huinck PhD and Utrechtumc Adinda Groenhuis MSc, Huib Versnel PhD and Alex Hoetink PhD to investigate the experiences of CI-users and identify what works and what doesn’t work in the Musi-CI training. The course Action Research meets Design Research course helped me a lot to understand what I was doing and how we, as a consortium, worked together. Joke received the Pearl from ZonMw for this project.